RIGA, June 4 (LETA) - The vast majority of Latvian municipalities, both now and after the elections, will have to take care of cash flow or attracting companies that would create jobs and pay good salaries to their residents, said Peteris Strautins, economist at Luminor Bank and author of the Luminor regional export study, in an interview with LETA.

He assessed that the situation in the economies of Latvian municipalities is currently very different. Alongside the municipalities that have built pragmatic relations with entrepreneurs and have taken care of attracting investments, there are municipalities that resemble melting blocks of ice and where attracting investments is a burning issue.

"There are municipalities where the population continues to decline by about 3 percent per year. This is population collapse. It means that these places are losing what development resources they have left at a rapid pace. I also fully understand that it is difficult to change anything in such places today, because the negative inertia is very strong. But we have to try!" stressed the economist.

He also pointed out that there are several municipalities that have managed to break the previous less than favorable development path and now have successful businesses and rising incomes. For example, this was the case in Kuldiga and Livani municipalities in the past, and now positive dynamics are also being observed in Aluksne municipality.

At the same time, it is evident that a number of municipal politicians live in a "different world" and think that they have no influence on the economic activity of their cities and municipalities, as this is the responsibility of the central government.

"They are not "involved in politics" at all, only in economic matters, which in their understanding is the most simple, communal level of these things - asphalt, pipes, lawns, maybe a fountain as a special extra. But of course to them central government is bad, as are taxes, electricity prices, the education system, so it's not even worth the effort. How to reconcile that with the inconvenient fact that other municipalities are doing very well with this same government, taxes and electricity prices, is a question that does not even cross their minds," Strautins said ironically.

Therefore, he said, even after this week's municipal elections, it could happen that those municipalities that are already successful will become even more successful, and those municipalities that have big problems could become even worse off. Moreover, the fact that Latvia has a low birth rate will contribute to this, and the labor gap in the development centers will be filled not only with immigrants, but also with people from places in Latvia that are not developing.

"Latvia will have areas whose development path will be like the middle of Australia or the great American prairies, where a very dispersed population lives in small numbers, working in modern forestry and agriculture and wealthy enough to afford to take their children to school," the economist predicted.